Quoted:
Maybe not. In the begining, Ho Chi Minh was pro American. He even had a lot of democratic ideas. It was our taking the side of the South Vietnamese that started him leaning more toward the Chinese Communists. I'm not advocating communism. I spent my 13.5 months in VietNam, 68-69 fighting against it, but the U.S. isn't without some blame. If we'd have given Ho some support, there is a good posibility that he would have been pro-democratic and save us 50,000 sum odd thousand lives and billions of dollars.
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Omega5,
My understanding of Ho Chi Minh's history comes from a lot of sources, mostly reading. The liberals and most of the press swallowed this 'democratic' line hook line and sinker. OF course Ho Chi Minh was not his real name. It is not generally known that Ho was trained as an communist agent in the Soviet Union in early last century. He was widely traveled, and a brilliant communist, who masquraded as a lover of democracy. Ho was all things to all people. Sure he was involved in the resistance against the Japanese, but so were many other groups in Indo-China. Since Ho had the training and support of the Soviet Union his resistance group was one of the dominate one's.
Ho during the struggle against the French during the French Indo-china war was a double agent who went under various aliases. He would provide names of other resistance leaders to the French Secret Police, undermining the groups that had ideals that differed from his communist idealogy, and weaking them. Sun Tzu would have proud. During the '54' revolution Ho turned is communist ideals into reality by murdering most of the landowners and causing a famine that killed ten's of thousands of his own countrymen. No, Ho was no democrat, rather a ruthless butcher of his people. Uncle Ho and Uncle Joe were not that far apart...
Given what I've said, I do not believe we were not without fault. I was in Vietnam 66-68 and saw plenty. A war fought under insane rules of engagement, corruption and waste on a vast scale, a president that had ego so large that he told he Joint Chiefs where they could bomb. And worse, after we won a tremendous victory on the TET-68 battlefield, a month later, March 31st, he bugged out, taking the rest of the country with him. LBJ was playing out of his league And as you said, we veterans paid the price in blood.
Welcome home,
Gib